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Guns. Lifting weight. Lead. Iron. Both heavy metals. Both topics for me, but rarely do I mix them.

Ed, this post is for you.

After last Saturday’s class, Ed and I (we carpooled) stopped at the Bastrop Buc-Ee’s for gas and some food. Ed asked me about ways to improve his grip.

“Deadlift”.

Not really going to work for Ed.  But truly, that’s what has helped me so much in my grip. When you’re holding 365# in the air, you better have a good grip. Other things have helped too, like hammer curls, and just ensuring I grip/squeeze when I’m lifting and don’t just let my fingertips barely hold on.

What it comes down to is: if you want to get good at something, you have to do that something. If you want to get good at boxing, you have to get in the ring and box. Certainly tho, you can do boxing-like things to help your boxing. For example, jog/run medium distances to bring up your endurance so you can go 12 rounds, but sprints won’t contribute a whole lot to your ring performance. So if you want to get better at gripping, you have to grip things.

That said, grip isn’t a simple thing. There’s crushing, there’s pinching, and there’s holding (supporting). There are fingers, there’s your thumb, there’s forearm muscles that work in various directions. There’s really a lot in here, but to keep the discussion focused, I’m going to look at gripping a handgun and possible ways to improve your grip on your gun to help with recoil management.

No, I’m not an expert here, nor is this any sort of training program. I’m just thinking aloud based on my knowledge and experience.

When you’re gripping a gun, you’re doing so because you need to shoot it. When you shoot it, there will be recoil. You cannot stop recoil, only manage it. There are numerous ways to help manage that recoil, and I’m going to focus on one: your grip.

I’ve read many ways about how to grip the gun. There’s the Weaver Stance with it’s push-pull dynamics. Brian Enos talks about squeezing the grip itself but with neutral “directional forces” (if you will) so the gun isn’t being pushed or pulled in any direction. Tom Givens said something to the effect of the strong/trigger hand gives a “front-to-back” squeeze and the weak/support hand gives a “left-to-right” squeeze, thus together it’s a strong “box” of inward pressure. Massad Ayoob refers to the “crush grip” where you squeeze so hard until you start shaking then back off just to the point where you stop shaking. When we teach out at KR Training, Karl Rehn came up with a nice analogy of “Homer choking Bart“.

While everyone has a different way of approaching it, it really boils down to you need to grip and grip hard.

Trouble is, when you grip hard, you can’t grip for long. Muscles will get tired, and when they get tired, your grip is going to loosen. Given this, what it tells me is two things need to be focused on for improving grip for shooting handguns: 1. strength, 2. endurance.

Note, I’m setting aside other grip issues and problems. For example, if your hands get sweaty, that’s going to make it harder to grip things. You’ll have to find some other way to manage that, but one way? Grip even harder.  Point being, there are other problems one can have with their grip, like sweaty hands or gun fit issues, and those are outside the scope of this writing.

Ed mentioned to me he was working on it by taking a ball and squeezing it. I think that’s a good approach, but after a while it won’t be enough. The problem? After a while, it’s no challenge to you. You can squeeze it to death, you can hold it until you stop from boredom before exhaustion. Continuing to squeeze that ball won’t allow you to progress. Ed knew I had previously mentioned the Captains of Crush grippers, but honestly? They feel like more of an assistance exercise than a primary. That is, if you want to get good at gripping a handgun, you need to grip a handgun or what most closely resembles that (since “working out” with a gun has other safety and social issues).

The CoC grippers are very good at developing crush strength. But I’ve found it’s within a particular range of motion. It’s a… clamp for lack of a better term. Using these grippers doesn’t involve my whole hand, my whole forearm, my fingertips, my pinky — because the pinky is so heavily involved in recoil management. So, I look at grippers as more “assistance work” than main work. Nevertheless, I see much benefit in using equipment like this. First, if you can close a CoC #1 or #2 gripper? you’ve got a decently strong grip. If you can close a #3? I think you’ll be find holding on to a handgun. If you can work these, you’re still going to have a very strong crush grip, which is important. Second, these CoC grippers offer progression. Frankly, this is key.

The problem with Ed’s ball is that once he’s mastered it, what do you do next? I’m sure you can find “stronger” balls to work with, but what sort of progression is there? can you measure it? can you be certain of it? With a set like the CoC’s, you can know precisely where you are, what you’re doing, and where to go next. If the “S” is easy, move to “T”, when the “T” is easy, move to “1″ and so on. You can know what you’re doing, and you can certainly progress. Because if you want to get stronger, you have to keep working with greater resistance.

But don’t think with the grippers that you have to work on crushing the #3. How about getting the “S” model and holding it closed for 30 seconds? That’s the second part: endurance. When you shoot, you don’t draw and shoot 1, you’ll be shooting more. Take a class and how much are you shooting? If you’re shooting an IPSC or IDPA match, how long does the stage last? No, you don’t need to hold on for 5 minutes, but 10 seconds isn’t uncommon, maybe up to 20. In fact, you might consider it broken apart. Maybe you shoot for 5 seconds, run to the next position, shoot for another 5 seconds, run to the next, another 5, and so on. Maybe you could crush the gripper all the way closed, hold for 5, release for 2-3 seconds, crush and hold for 5, etc..  That is, work to replicate the conditions you’ll be shooting under. If that gets easy, move up to the next gripper.

There are also these things called the IronMind EGG. There’s lots of similar products. But here the point remains that there’s different models for different levels of resistance, and it provides more of an overall crush feel in your hands — fingertips are going to get involved. Crush it — Homer choking Bart — and hold for 20 seconds. Do this over and over. Build up the crush strength, build up the endurance. I think products like these can provide a more “handgun-grip-like” setup and thus could work better as a “primary exercise”. There are also foam grippers on the market that are more rectangular in shape, perhaps with finger grooves. That’s very similar in size and shape to a double-stack striker-fired handgun’s grip — grip it like the gun.

(Note: I’m not a shill for IronMind or CoC… just like their CoC grippers; never held their EGG product).

I will say tho, I think the biggest part of improving your grip while shooting is the mental aspect.

You just have to make the mental effort to focus on your grip.

When you are working with grippers or crush balls, you have to grip hard… then grip harder…. and harder. You are going to get tired. Muscles are going to want to relax. You must tell yourself to grip harder. You must make your muscles grip harder. It’s a mental thing. We will lose our grip without even thinking about it, so if instead you can train yourself to progressively grip harder, the hopeful end result is a maintenance of a steady grip, not a slowly loosening one. This will require you to be mentally engaged in the grip work, not just mindless crushing.

Next time you go to the range? Don’t work on drills, don’t work on your accuracy, or your speed. Work on your grip. Pick some drills like a Bill Drill. Don’t worry about the target or your speed or whatever so much (of course, do be safe, do ensure all rounds impact the backstop, etc.), just focus on your grip and crushing the hell out of the gun the whole time. Experiment with different grip strengths: maybe you crush the unholy hell out of it, maybe you back off 10%. What if you crush like hell with your support hand but have just a “good grip” with your strong/trigger hand. Does how hard you grip with your trigger-hand affect the movement of your trigger finger? Make a whole range session out of playing with your grip and focusing solely upon that topic.

When you dry fire? Do not forget to have Homer choke Bart. It’s very easy to slack on your grip when you dry fire because you know there’s no recoil. I catch myself doing this all the time. You have to make the mental effort to remind yourself to grip hard when dry firing.

After you learn a few things at the range, reassess the grip workout you do. Maybe you found “this much grip” worked, so crush the ball with that much force and hold it. Maybe you need a stronger ball or gripper. It’s going to be an iterative process.

Finally, don’t expect grip improvements overnight. Actually, you may well improve some after the “focus on your grip” range session, because now you’ve thought about it, became aware of it, and will be more cognizant of your grip when shooting. On the same token, don’t be surprised if you regress! I found as my grip strength improved, I wasn’t necessarily aware of it. That is, in my mind I was still gripping the same as I always had, but on an absolute scale I was gripping harder. Ever watch what happens to your front sight when you change how much you crush grip the gun? the sight moves. I had to readjust some other things to bring things back in line. Don’t use the changes as an excuse to back off on your grip: it’s just a way to help you find other weak points to make stronger.

And yes, you have to make a routine of this. Work on it every day. Doesn’t have to be much, maybe 10 minutes a day. Make it a constant thing. Keep a log of your work so you can see your progress.

It also don’t have to be true “exercising” of your grip. When you hold onto something, anything during your day, don’t just weakly hold it or let it roll to the end of your fingertips. Grip it. Hold it. Own it. When you feel your grip loosening, tighten up. When you feel your muscles getting tired, hang on for another 15 seconds. Again, change your mental approach to grip.

The better we can manage recoil, the better we can shoot. You don’t need awesome grip strength to defend yourself, but the more you can grip, the better you’ll be able to rack the slide, shoot longer and faster strings, and manage through classes and practice. It’s more useful to be strong than weak, so hopefully the above has given you a few ideas about how you can make your grip stronger. It won’t happen overnight, but persistence will pay off.